Saturday interview + Denmark | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/series/saturday-interview+world/denmark
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René Redzepi: the outsiderhttps://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/nov/06/rene-redzepi-noma-restaurant
René Redzepi's restaurant, Noma, is the best in the world. His new cookbook has been described as 'the most important of the year', and this week he was even on MasterChef. So why the long face?<p>Only the live prawn went uneaten (and most of the sea urchin, which is a more complicated story). The prawn arrived in a glass jar filled with ice. When I opened the lid, its little legs waved. The sweet Irish chef who brought it described it as "very, very, very fresh; delicious; like essence of the sea". He saw my face and took pity. "Don't worry," he said. "A lot of people don't eat it."</p><p>Not much goes uneaten at Noma, the small restaurant tucked away in a watery corner of Copenhagen, that was declared "The Best Restaurant in the World" earlier this year by San Pellegrino. René Redzepi, the 31-year-old head chef, which is to say the best chef in the world, has created a new style of Nordic cooking, "an homage to soil and sea", taking seasonality and local produce (foraging forests, combing sea shores, picking up things "just outside the door, that we step on for so many years") to an extreme. His new book has been described as "the most important cookbook of the year". Noma is fully booked three months ahead, lunch and dinner, but they smuggled me into a table in the bar, and gave me little tasters of this and that: a smoked quail's egg; a leek, its roots deep fried, the next two centimetres steamed and stuffed with pureed roasted garlic; the still warm flesh of an Arctic sea urchin - they had let it creep across my hand in the kitchen half an hour before - on a sea of ice-cold milk, and cucumber and dill. ("It's the very one you held," Redzepi told me.) I devoured eight "snacks" and four dishes before I was so full I had to stop. They looked quite shocked. "Many people eat much more," Redzepi said, pretending not to notice the tongues of sea urchin, hidden under my bread. "Many people eat seven or 12 mains."</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/nov/06/rene-redzepi-noma-restaurant">Continue reading...</a>RestaurantsFood & drinkLife and styleDenmarkRené RedzepiEuropeSat, 06 Nov 2010 00:07:14 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/nov/06/rene-redzepi-noma-restaurantPhotograph: Ty Stange/GuardianRené Redzepi, head chef of Noma in Copenhagen. Photograph: Ty Stange for the GuardianPhotograph: Ty Stange/GuardianRené Redzepi, head chef of Noma in Copenhagen. Photograph: Ty Stange for the GuardianSabine Durrant2010-11-06T00:07:14Z